Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable: A Family Memoir Book

‘Richly rewarding…a minor masterpiece…the book is extremely funny in places, extremely poignant in others and extremely well-written throughout – in fact, I haven’t enjoyed anything so much in ages’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Family histories can often be pretty deadly and journalists memoirs doubly so. Few of them, however, are written with as much skill and sensitivity as this one. Moving without being mawkish, Hastings’s book is a trove of marvellous stories’ Sunday Times ‘This brave and poignant book is the self-portrait of a supremely talented outsider who has spent his life trying to live up to his father’s achievements…what is beyond doubt is that Sir Max has exceeded the pinnacle of his parents’ aspirations for themselves’ Daily Telegraph ‘Regretful, wise and forthright…deals with unnecessary cruelties and self delusions and ends with a sense of completion and understanding’ Andrew Marr, Financial Times ‘Elegiac, reflective and very funny, Did You Really Shoot the Television is both a ceasefire and a reminder that families are rarely safe places for children to be’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Highly engaging’ Independent ‘[A] rollicking memoir’ Mail on Sunday ‘It’s a brilliantly entertaining book, full of funny well-told stories about his talented, eccentric, sometimes rackety predecessors’ Scotsman ‘Deeply moving…an intimate portrait of two people who made [Max Hastings] the great man he is’ Private Eye ‘This is Max Hastings’ most personal book to date, and for all his war reporting and newspaper reporting, it is his bravest…[he] tells his family’s story with great candour and a real newsman’s detail’ Country LifeRead More